Opinion Analysis by Roa Daher, Featured Writer

July 13th, 2021

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been an endless stream of news coverage of extreme weather events occurring worldwide, from a destructive tornado in the Czech Republic to hurricanes and fatal heat waves in North America. Not only have these weather events been more extreme, but they have also become more frequent and have appeared in areas that did not face these issues previously. The culprit behind the climate disasters: decades of rising CO2 levels culminating in a present CO2 concentration of 417 ppm (parts per million), which is the highest that carbon dioxide levels have been in the atmosphere over the past 4 million years.  

The only prospect that is worse than experiencing the first-hand effects of the Climate Crisis, is realizing how unprepared we are for it in terms of infrastructure and how many lives the crisis will claim due to extreme weather events and exceedingly high temperatures. When speaking about climate change, many say that we must leave the planet better than we found it for the future generations to come; however, we do not have that time on our hands. We are seeing the Climate Crisis happen in real-time, and we are seeing the effects of it on thousands of people who are suffering because of its consequences. Every day, we are approaching the point of no return, set by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, after which there is little to no hope of the planet cooling down. Instead, weather conditions will continue to worsen globally, as extreme weather events like flash floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes will occur with more intensity and frequency.

In late May, Cyclone Yaas hit India and claimed hundreds of lives; in June, Moscow experienced the highest temperatures recorded in 120 years, global temperatures began to rise to dangerous and unprecedented levels, and tropical storm Claudette hit the United States. In July, so far at least, tropical storm Elsa has claimed at least one life in Florida while New York City’s streets and subway have been dangerously flooded, making any mobility life-threatening.

 While it may seem that we are all facing the consequences of climate change together, that is untrue, as the crisis will hit the poor the hardest, especially those living in areas that are particularly vulnerable to weather events. While the poor will fall victim to climate change and lose their life’s work and potentially their lives, billionaires are making plans to go to space. The rich will use their money and resources to escape the threat of the crisis, despite the role they have played in creating it in the first place because of the big amount of resources that they use compared to the rest of the population.

Thus, there need to be investments in better infrastructures that would not crumble in the face of the crisis and cause any fatalities; one thing to mention is that there is a limit to how much we can mitigate the effects of climate change. Ultimately, we can try to improve infrastructure, have better safety protocols and awareness, and implement better evacuation systems, but that is not the solution. The solution is to cut emissions now and to do everything in our collective power to apply pressure on states to act in response to the climate emergency. Action in the form of legislation and a complete structural shift in the way we live can help alleviate the crisis, but time is running out. Corporations need to stop greenwashing and should start actually working towards immediate emission reductions and they should face pressure from states. Individual action is not enough in the face of the crisis, as there need to be large-scale changes and commitments for us to slow down the progression of climate change and save lives.